Welcome, Apple!

Yesterday Apple launched iPhoto, its photo management app, for the iPad and iPhone… and we’re rather pleased to find they’re the latest to switch to OpenStreetMap.

The desktop version of iPhoto, and indeed all of Apple’s iOS apps until now, use Google Maps. The new iPhoto for iOS, however, uses Apple’s own map tiles – made from OpenStreetMap data (outside the US).

The OSM data that Apple is using is rather old (start of April 2010) so don’t expect to see your latest and greatest updates on there. It’s also missing the necessary credit to OpenStreetMap’s contributors; we look forward to working with Apple to get that on there.

03 May 2012 Update: Apple appear to have added OpenStreetMap attribution in their iPhoto v 1.0.1

But we’re delighted to see another prominent map user make the switch to OpenStreetMap, and look forward to many more.

As cool as it is that Apple is reducing reliance on Google I do think that OpenMaps is quite some way behind.

For example you don’t seem to be able to search by house numbers. How is this actually a benefit to the end user? For photos this makes a lot of sense because you’re just using GPS co-ordinates but they mean nothing for navigation.

Is this going to be worked on anytime in the future? If so then maybe Apple could also use you for the Maps application as well.